HUNTSVILLE, AL, February 26, 2026 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Dr. Teresa Merriweather Orok is a nationally recognized leader in university-centered economic development whose nearly four-decade career has helped redefine the role of higher education in advancing inclusive prosperity, innovation, and regional transformation. As Founding Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Economic Development (CEIED) and Professor of Public Administration and Community Economic Development at Alabama A&M University, located in Huntsville, Alabama, she has built institutional frameworks that align research, workforce systems, entrepreneurship, and industry engagement into durable engines of growth.

From the outset of her career, Dr. Orok has operated with a clear philosophy: economic development is not an abstract concept but a structured responsibility. Institutions must intentionally convert knowledge into capacity, partnerships into mobility, and regional challenges into measurable outcomes. At Alabama A&M University—an 1890 Land-grant historically Black university—she has expanded external engagement and strengthened funding capacity while positioning the institution as a strategic driver in STEM innovation, workforce readiness, advanced manufacturing, aerospace collaboration, and technology commercialization.

Dr. Orok is widely respected for building what she describes as the "connective tissue" of economic ecosystems—integrating government, industry, philanthropy, community leadership, and academia into coordinated strategies that outlive individual funding cycles. Her leadership consistently bridges boardrooms and neighborhoods, federal agencies and rural communities, ensuring that economic systems are both competitive and inclusive.

Her national influence expanded significantly during her tenure as President of the University Economic Development Association (UEDA), where she made history as the first Black woman to lead the organization. Under her leadership, Alabama A&M University hosted UEDA's national conference—the first time in the association's 50-year history that a historically Black college or university served as host. This milestone redefined national dialogue around equity-centered, place-based innovation and elevated HBCUs as essential contributors to the American innovation economy.

Prior to her work in Alabama, Dr. Orok built foundational leadership experience across Georgia's public institutions, including Fort Valley State University and Albany State University, and within the Fulton County Board of Commissioners in Atlanta during a pivotal era of Black political leadership. There, she honed her expertise in coalition building, strategic public administration, and navigating complex policy environments.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, she led initiatives addressing workforce development, housing disparities, youth opportunity, and regional economic decline. She helped secure tens of millions of dollars in federal and philanthropic investment from partners including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Labor, NASA, and the Pew Foundation. Notably, she helped her institution become the first historically Black college or university to receive a HUD HBCU Economic Development Grant—an achievement that signaled both institutional capacity and national credibility.

Her leadership extends to the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and, in 2019, she was selected as a Fellow of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC)—the first African American and first representative from a historically Black college or university to receive that distinction. These appointments reflect her enduring commitment to rural resilience, regional competitiveness, and equitable economic systems.

A scholar-practitioner at her core, Dr. Orok earned her Bachelor's degree from Lane College, completed graduate studies in urban policy at Georgia State University, received her Master of Public Administration from Clark Atlanta University, and earned her PhD in Public Administration and Community Economic Development from Union Institute & University.

Rooted in rural West Tennessee as the tenth of eleven children, she attributes her resilience and strategic clarity to a family legacy grounded in entrepreneurship, faith, and service. Mentored by civic leaders including Ambassador Andrew Young, Mayor Maynard Jackson, Congressman John Lewis, and Tommie Dortch, she has consistently invested in developing the next generation of leaders—many of whom now serve nationally as executives, public servants, and changemakers.

Dr. Orok's legacy is defined not simply by positions held, but by systems built—platforms that expand opportunity, partnerships that scale impact, and institutional models that demonstrate how higher education can serve as the architecture of equitable and globally competitive prosperity.

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